I read the statement, but knowing the history of college football coaching and what coaches say sometimes prior to jumping ship, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he chose to go to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Stating that you are "committed" to the football program/university is hardly an ironclad guarantee in this day and age.

It would be kind of funny if he bolted. Pittsburgh media would be clamoring for Pederson to be fired. Pitt is reaping what they sow, the program obviously had constraints under wannstedt, but this whole debacle is from running wannstedt out of town and thinking they could bring in some young upstart (who was unnamed at the time) to bring the program to relevancy. Minus of course meeting the salary requirements of a legit up and comer.

shafnutz05 wrote:I read the statement, but knowing the history of college football coaching and what coaches say sometimes prior to jumping ship, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he chose to go to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Stating that you are "committed" to the football program/university is hardly an ironclad guarantee in this day and age.

Yeah, but people in the know in Pittsburgh sports (Paul Alexander) know that Chryst is a standup guy, not like that hot headed graham, and if Chryst were interested in leaving he would be absolutely upfront about his intentions to everyone.

^This is true too. I suppose time will tell. I know if I were in his shoes, that would be a really difficult opportunity to pass up, even if the B1G is hardly a premier conference (at least in terms of competition) these days.

shafnutz05 wrote:I read the statement, but knowing the history of college football coaching and what coaches say sometimes prior to jumping ship, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he chose to go to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Stating that you are "committed" to the football program/university is hardly an ironclad guarantee in this day and age.

Yeah, but people in the know in Pittsburgh sports (Paul Alexander) know that Chryst is a standup guy, not like that hot headed graham, and if Chryst were interested in leaving he would be absolutely upfront about his intentions to everyone.

Troy Loney wrote:It would be kind of funny if he bolted. Pittsburgh media would be clamoring for Pederson to be fired. Pitt is reaping what they sow, the program obviously had constraints under wannstedt, but this whole debacle is from running wannstedt out of town and thinking they could bring in some young upstart (who was unnamed at the time) to bring the program to relevancy. Minus of course meeting the salary requirements of a legit up and comer.

Running Wannstache out of town wasnt the wrong thing to do. Running Wannstache out of town and having no real contingency plan in place after you run him out of town WAS the wrong thing to do. That's were idiot Pederson messed up.

Pederson isnt going to get fired. He hasnt gotten fired yet and despite all the shenanigans during his second tenure. For whatever reason, hes not going anywhere.

Troy Loney wrote:It would be kind of funny if he bolted. Pittsburgh media would be clamoring for Pederson to be fired. Pitt is reaping what they sow, the program obviously had constraints under wannstedt, but this whole debacle is from running wannstedt out of town and thinking they could bring in some young upstart (who was unnamed at the time) to bring the program to relevancy. Minus of course meeting the salary requirements of a legit up and comer.

Running Wannstache out of town wasnt the wrong thing to do. Running Wannstache out of town and having no real contingency plan in place after you run him out of town WAS the wrong thing to do. That's were idiot Pederson messed up.

Pederson isnt going to get fired. He hasnt gotten fired yet and despite all the shenanigans during his second tenure. For whatever reason, hes not going anywhere.

In hindsight, I kind of think it was. Running him out of town was done under the assumption that they'd be better off bringing in guys who would use Pitt as a stepping stone. So far they've hired 3 guys in two years and are looking at number 4 in the next couple of weeks. They've turned the coaching position into a revolving door because for some reason they assumed that they were better than what Wannstache was doing.

Its understandable that from the outside, it seems like a bad idea to can Wanny. Troy Loney would probably admit that Troy Loney is at best, a casual observer a Pitt football. To the untrained eye, Wanny had 9 wins in '08, 10 in '09 and 8 in '10. Thats a pretty good run.

But for the few of us that truly care about the program, spend time and money on pitt super panther football, travel to road games, follow recruiting, etc etc, that last year in particular was very diffacult to take. Pitt was on the cusp of a BCS game in 2009 and they blew it in horrible fashion. Plus, they did not show up in the backyard brawl in 2009, either. They looked like they didn't care against WVU and they choked a game away against Cinci.

But 2010 was really the season that broke their back.

In 2010, they opened the season with an OT loss to a pretty decent Utah team. In classic wanny fashion, they found creative ways to lose that game. They got manhandled on a thursday night national tv game against a medicore Miami team. That miami game was an embarassment. So was the Notre Dame game. Then, with yet another chance to win the big east and go to a BCS bowl, they choked against a horrid Connecticut offense. Following that loss, they more or less threw in the towl for the WVU game and lost 35-10. That WVU loss was one of the few times kenny the kangaroo left a game early. Pitt simply did not show up and they got ran out of teh stadium. After that game, it was clear wanny's time was up.

The thing that made that 2010 an extra special failure was that 5 guys on that team ended up getting drafted. Two more guys, DeCicco and Hynoski, went undrafted but ended up being contributors on pretty good teams. So there were 6 or 7 NFL caliber guys on that team and they won 7 stinking regular season games in the big east conference.

Pitt shouldnt expect to be a national championship contender, but its not out of line to expect a team with 6 or 7 NFL guys to win more than 7 games in the big east.